This week, there were five of us and, as Steve and John had not played it before, we decided on Viticulture as tonight's game. This was actually the Essential Edition which adds a few elements from the Tuscany expansion and some rule tweaks. The Mamas and Papas module helps by giving everyone a slightly different set-up and is a good addition to the game. Money is tight but the ability to sell a field helps quite a bit and, in hindsight, I should have done that as I pretty much only used one field the entire game. Steve was playing very patiently and spent the first half of the game just building his infrastructure and ignoring harvesting fields. However, this meant that by the time he wanted to harvest, everyone else was doing something else so he had free rein and this enabled him to catch up quickly. I made a push to try and end the game but could only get to 19 VPs, which is one short of the end-game target. This allowed Steve to get enough points to pull just ahead while I was one action short of being able to fill a game-winning wine order, due to being blocked from that space. Well played, Steve. |